


Red Fire

by cosmicConundrum



Category: Homestuck
Genre: 4/13, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Demon Karkat, M/M, blue exorcist - Freeform, normal john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 16:26:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10620696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicConundrum/pseuds/cosmicConundrum
Summary: John enters Sburb, the world-renowned school for exorcists-in-training. The idea is simple: demons are evil, and exorcists are meant to keep them under control. But even in a high school setting, John runs into events that are completely out of the ordinary, and runs into one such demon that becomes so much more to him. Sometimes your entire reality can be shattered in an instant.[DISCONTINUED]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Your name is John Egbert, and you are ready.

Today is your first day in the school known only as Sburb. Well, at least that’s the short name of the school. You know that the school has a full name as well, one you are not familiar with. Something along the lines of Sburbia? Sbugrub? Sburbith? You don’t actually know, as you said earlier. But you figure you will find out eventually, someday.

But worrying about the name of your school wasn’t the most important and foremost topic at hand.

You are in the middle of preparing for your very first school day. Since you cannot really describe that fact any more accurately, you should probably explain why it is your very first day of school at Sburb. Sburb is not a public school. It’s actually more of a private school. Well, no, that’s not even close to being true. Sburb is a secret school. And it’s not just any secret school either. A good analogy for the type of school Sburb is would be something along the lines of “that one school from Harry Potter the main character ends up going to.” So yeah.

Sburb is one of the newest schools for demon-summoning, and everything of that nature. It’s a pretty cool place, you’ve heard. It’s a pretty complicated story as to why you are going to Sburb. It involves… some drama, you’ll have to admit. Actually, you don’t really want to think about the past. It gets a little depressing.

Still, though.

You’re excited for your first day. Who wouldn’t be? You look over the contents of your single suitcase before nodding to yourself and zipping it up. You are totally ready. Soon after you finish putting on your “first day of school!” clothes (which followed the school dress code but weren’t quite a uniform), you head downstairs with your suitcase. Your loving dad has prepared breakfast for you, a fact you are 100% thankful for. You just don’t always show it.

Breakfast passes by so quickly you don’t recall the act of eating. Alas, it is time to go. Dad herds you into the car, insisting that he drive you even though you were already learning how to drive (and you weren’t all that bad either). It wasn’t your fault you were a little late when it came to driving!

You spot your friend Rose sitting near the table by the entrance. She’s in her usual attire, which consists of the classic Sburb school uniform, along with a black skirt and some lavender-ish colored flats.

Wait a minute, where did Dave go?

And Jade, for that matter.

You put your thoughts aside and wave to Rose. She spots you and waves back. You happily march over to where she is sitting and take a seat in the chair across from her.

“Hello, John. How is your first day so far?” Rose asks thoughtfully.

You pause to wonder for a moment, then answer, “It’s alright. I’m a little confused. And, you know, since I’ve only been here for about an hour, and all I have done is check in, I don’t really know what’s going on right now.”

Rose nods in understanding.

“Would you like me to show you around?” Rose offers.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind!” You exclaim.

Rose carefully slides the chair back and gets up, brushing herself off and moving to pick up the stack of books and binders on the table.

“May I see your schedule?”

“Sure,” you reply, and pass the slip of paper to your friend.

“So it seems that you have ‘Introduction to Exorcism’ with Mr. English, the primary director for all the school’s activities and classes. Don’t worry, he’s pretty nice,” Rose says.

“I know, I know. It’s just Jade’s grandpa.”

You’ve heard from your friends about the school for awhile now, but you’ve only understood snippets of the constant flow of information they keep feeding you. You heard that Mr. English was the director/principal, but it wasn’t… official? Well, most of the stuff at Sburb wasn’t very “official.” Maybe that was because it was a secret/private school. You guess? You’re not that sure. Sburb was just a weird school. Jade didn’t really tell you much about her grandpa’s exact position in the school.

“…in Room 28. That’s the eleventh room on the left of the hall right over here, so you should be able to find it pretty easily.”

“Huh?”

You don’t realize you accidentally zoned out until Rose calls your name about four times and gives you an inquiring but concerned look.

“Oh, sorry. I’m paying attention now!” You say quickly.

Rose gestures towards the line of rooms on the left with one hand and carries the rest of her books in the other.

“Are you ready? Let’s go.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Welcome to Sburb, school of Exorcism,” A deep voice booms from the front of the room.

Your attention snaps back to the teacher, Mr. English. Wow, you really need to pay more attention and stop zoning out.

“As you all know, this is a beginner’s course, so you will not have to struggle too much to keep up. Keep in mind that we are going to be working with very dangerous entities! I want everyone here to be aware of safety first, even if you think it’s stupid that we keep emphasizing this,” the teacher declares.

You shift to a more comfortable position in your seat and get your fresh blank white notebook and pen ready for note taking.

“One of the first things you will have to know is that you have to be able to see demons in order to interact with them in any way. Since all of you are new, most of you probably haven’t received a dose of the Seer mix yet.”

Oh, right. Rose mentioned something about the ‘Seer mix’, which was some kind of enchanted potion or something that, once received, would allow you to be able to see the demons. Normal people aren’t able to see demons because of some other kind of weird property of cross-dimensional stuff, or something like that. But if you got the dose, then you would (somehow, magically) be able to see demons from then on.

Rose also mentioned something about her not needing the dose because she was “already a Seer,” or something along the lines of that? You don’t really know. You don’t know that much about how Sburb works, so you can’t really explain anything right now. You guess you’ll figure it out later. It had something to do with being given a title so that every student attending Sburb would have a special position to fill in real battle scenarios. Exciting.

You’ll get there when you get there.

“If you have not received the dose yet, please raise your hand,” Mr. English says.

You raise your hand slowly.

Mr. English walks around the classroom and passes out these small slips of paper with some kind of pattern on them to all the kids with their hands raised. When you get yours, you realize that it’s just one of those ordinary stick-on tattoos you get at carnivals and parties. The pattern was that of an elaborate spade. But that was it. It was just a small tattoo. You had expected to receive a bottle of whatever the ‘Seer’ stuff was, and it would probably be a disgusting potion that you would have to drink. Luckily, it was just a mere tattoo.

“You’re probably all wondering why I passed out a bunch of fake tattoos,” the teacher says, “We don’t give much of the ‘Seer’ mix to any student as to prevent overdosing. Also, if you drank the potion, it would only last for an hour or so. So we enchant a small bit of the mix into these special tattoos, so that the effect can be permanent. The tattoos are also permanent, even if they seem like the wash-off tattoos you can get in various other areas.”

You sigh and stare down at the small spade tattoo in your hands. You begin to wonder where you should put it. On your wrist? On your neck? On your ankle? Back? Face? No way, you are not putting it on your face.

“You may put the tattoo wherever you like. You apply it the same way you apply any normal kid non-permanent tattoo, and you only need to apply a little bit of water over the paper.”

Mr. English then proceeds to pass out little bowls of water with small sponge blocks floating on top. You decide on applying the tattoo on the side of your neck. Eventually, with the help of another classmate (who turns out to be Rose’s cousin, Roxy), you position the spade correctly and imprint it on your skin. You peel off the wet paper remaining and feel your neck.

“Do you need a mirror?” Roxy asks.

“Probably,” you answer.

Roxy laughs and hands you a small handheld mirror. You peer into it to check out your tattoo, which is somehow miraculously perfectly placed.

“Thanks so much, Roxy!” you tell her.

“No problemo,” she gives you a thumbs up.

The rest of class drawls on and on and on, and also on and on. You pay close attention to all the things the teacher says, but it all sort of jumbles together into one huge lump in your memory. After class, you head out and see Rose patiently waiting for you in the hallway.

You’ve officially survived your first class period of ‘Introduction to Exorcism’ along with Rose’s help. She said she’s taken this class and passed it quickly, which is why she knows a lot about demon hunting already. Rose was so lucky! Well, if you needed help, Rose could probably tutor you, at least. So you wouldn’t have to worry about your grades. That was good, you guess? It would at least take some of the pressure off your shoulders for doing well in both schools.

Did you mention that yet? You are going to a normal high school as well as Sburb. That way, you wouldn’t have to disappear completely from the public’s eyes and still appear normal simultaneously. Unfortunately, it meant that you would have to concentrate on both a normal high school’s classes (and all the worries that came with it) as well. Luckily, all your friends also went to the public school, so once again, you were not alone in your suffering.

Rose takes another look at your schedule, her eyes locking onto the next class of yours.

“Spells and such. I see you have the same class as me!” Rose says cheerfully.

“Yes! Can you help me if I need help? I have absolutely no idea what I am doing,” you add, because it was true.

“Of course. This class is mostly about memorization, though.”

“So where are Dave and Jade?” you ask, as you remember what you were wondering about earlier.

“They both had a few tests this morning, so they weren’t able to make it to the front to help me lead you around the school.” Rose notifies you.

“Oh. We all have the same lunch, though, right?” you ask.

“Yes. We can complain together then,” she smiles while trying not to laugh. You agree.

Ms. Mendican walks around the classroom handing out small sheets of weird-feeling paper along with small sheets of normal paper and pens of various colors.

You turn to Rose who’s sitting next to you, and mouth the words, “What are these for?”

“Some spells require seals and patterns and other words drawn on paper,” she whispers.

“Please copy the symbol drawn on the board carefully on the normal paper,” the teacher says.

You pick up a black pen and carefully draw the symbol. When you finish, you look up at the board then down at the paper again, deciding that it’s pretty close. You make sure that even the thickness of the strokes matches the ones on the board.

Ms. Mendican walks around the room slowly, inspecting the symbols. You notice her nod in satisfaction at Rose’s symbol, which is practically perfect and causes you to stare at her in shock. Ms. Mendican looks at yours for awhile, then decides it is okay.

“Good job! Welcome to my spells class, by the way,” she whispers cheerfully.

Then you are all instructed to copy down the symbol again on the weird feeling paper. You take a deep breath, grip your pen, and get to work.

You hold the finished seal carefully in your hand and watch as the teacher instructs the class on the next thing to do.

“Now I want you all to place it in your palm, like this,” Ms. Mendican puts a sheet of the paper with a seal on it in her palm.

You and the other students do the same.

“This spell should work even with no active demons in the room,” the teacher says, “All you have to do is put your hand out, like this, as if you are trying to stop someone from doing something, and shout, ‘ay’, like the letter A.”

You raise an eyebrow at Rose. She motions for you to turn around and try it. A few other kids around you stand up dramatically, throw their hands out in a huge ‘stop’ motion, and yell, “ay!” Most of them succeed, and the seal disintegrates in a flash of light and a small burst of air.

You notice Rose do the same to your left.

You stand up with your palm out and yell ‘ay’! To your surprise, it works, and your seal disappears in another flash of light.

“Good job, everyone!” Ms. Mendican claps, “Time to work on some harder spells. Warm up time is over!”


	3. Chapter 3

“Lunchtime!”

Jade tackle-hugs you from nowhere and you fall to the ground in a majestic dance. After a brief hug you let her get off. You lie on the ground and see all your friends peering down at you with huge smiles, except for Dave, because his smile is too small to be seen.

“Welcome to Sburb, Egbert,” Dave says, smirking.

“So how did your morning go?” You ask him and Jade while you are pulled back up.

“We had a test for demon types. It was pretty long, but not that hard,” Jade says, “Anyways, let’s go eat lunch!”

You and your friends move to a nice large table in the corner of the cafeteria. You pull out your seat and sit down. Retrieving your lunch bag from your backpack, you look around the cafeteria to notice all the other students (and there aren’t a lot of students, probably only around fifty) doing the same.

“So,” Dave pauses to take a sip of apple juice, and then continues, “What did YOU do, John?”

“Rose helped guide me around the school so I wouldn’t accidentally miss all my classes,” you say.

“I’m honored to hear that you appreciate my helpfulness,” Rose says.

You take a few moments to open your lunch pack. You had brought a medium but plain ham sandwich along with a lot of cookies (darn it, dad!) and some water. But as soon as you lift open the unzipped flap, a colorful tiny thing pops out. You let out a manly scream and jump back a few feet.

“What is that?!” you shriek.

You can now see that the colorful tiny thing is actually pink, and has four tentacles. It sort of resembles a cartoonish version of an octopus, or something like that. The creepiest part of the thing was that it had a FACE. And it was also rapidly floating towards you while squealing things like, “Let’s be tanglebuddies!” in the scariest high-pitched voice you have ever heard.

You grab a chair from the floor and attempt to whack it, but it dodges it easily.

It is Jade who saves the day, in the end. She takes out a rolled up newspaper and easily bats it into nonexistence.

“How did you do that?” you demand.

“That was a squiddle,” Jade says, almost bored, “They’re low-level demons that you can find pretty much everywhere. I used to think they were pretty cute, but now…” she sighs.

You learn that Jade had, at one point, summoned a bunch of squiddles and then kept them secretly in a small fishtank for several weeks. It wasn’t until the end of those few weeks that they were found. They had floated all around Jade’s dorm, wrecking the place. She ended up sadly sending them back to their home.

“How come you were able to kill it with a rolled up newspaper?” You ask, confused.

“Well, actually, I didn’t kill it. When you ‘kill’ a demon, you just send it back to their dimension. And as for how I ‘killed’ it with a piece of newspaper, well, this is one of my specialty weapons. You know, from the strife specibus?” Jade says, looking at you with a puzzled look.

“He didn’t get anything yet,” Rose informs Jade from the side.

“Oh, okay! You’ll get to pick your specialty weapons a while later in your weapons class,” Jade says.

“For example, I have this amazing sword,” Dave tells you from across the table.

“And I have my knitting needles, which double as magic wands,” Rose adds.

“Besides my newspaper roll, I also have a rifle,” Jade joins in.

“Those are all really cool!” you exclaim happily, “I wonder what I should choose as my weapon…”

“You don’t have to worry about it until you actually get to weapons training, as Jade mentioned earlier,” Dave says.

“Okay.”

“Let’s keep eating, then,” Dave finishes, and gets back to munching on a sandwich.

You stare down slowly at your lunchbag. You wonder whether or not you should find some kind of demon spray or something for your personal items. In the end, you open the bag to see that it is void of any other creepy floating squids. You sigh in relief.

Lunch passes rather quickly after that. Rose and Dave inform you that they both have the same class as you, athletics training. Which was basically gym class. Except more demon-huntery. And probably five or six times more dangerous;

“Let’s go to gym!” Rose says, leading you across the halls of the main school building, outside and through the campus, then to a huge fenced outdoor arena-like stadium.

You gaze up at the fenced walls, blocking the sun with one hand, and whisper, “This is going to be something, isn’t it.”

“Alright, class,” the teacher (technically Dave’s older brother, but not really? You are not sure. There are a lot of strange familial matters surrounding you and your group of friends) says, “Today we will be learning how to run.”

Pretty much the entire class groans. You just stand there with a very confused expression on your face.

“I know you all know how to run. But we will be learning, specifically, how to run from demons,” Mr. Strider adds.

You inhale sharply and prepare yourself for the most intense session of gym you will ever experience.

Mr. Strider herds the class over to a large whiteboard with sketches in marker of various demons. You spot a large cat-like demon with two mouths, a kangaroo-looking demon with ram horns, and a large humanoid but huge demon with two heads, each with one eye and one mouth, and several other demons. Your eyes dart to the one huge mass of tentacles, teeth, and eyes at the end of the board. You let out another long exhale.

“These here,” the teacher says, pointing to the demons on the board, “Are common lusii-type demons. Most of them are mid-level demons, though one of them specifically are high-level and very, very dangerous,” he points to the large tentacle-monster, “This one specifically is a close relative of some of the highest ranking demons. If you see one of these, never approach it. Even if you think you are skilled enough, you should probably run and hope it doesn’t catch you.

“You shouldn’t have to worry, though, because you only find this species of demon in dark, water-filled areas.” He finishes.

You give Dave and Rose a look that could mean something like, “What have I gotten myself into when I joined this school?”

“You’ll get used to it,” Dave says.

“We’ll be training for running away from the other demons on this board, so you can get used to having to use different strategies to escape from different demons.”

You practically die at the thought.

Then, just as you predicted, Mr. Strider takes a few long steps towards a cage in the back of the clearing that all of you are standing in, and takes off the cloth that covered it.

A confused looking crustacean-like demon stands in the cage, peering around at the bright light from above. Maybe the demon dimension didn’t have any suns?

Next, Mr. Strider pulls a lever on the wall you had never seen before. A platform underneath him rises up, pushing him to the spectator part of the stadium-arena. A chain that had held the door of the cage closed gets pulled to the side, and the cage door opens. The crab-like demon shrieks horrendously, then charges out of the cage. You have a few milleseconds to see your classmates scatter left and right before you turn and run.

You turn your head every few seconds to look at the demon. Only then do you notice that a small chain had been wrapped around it’s body, probably so it could be contained if necessary.

You hear Mr. Strider’s voice booming through the arena through a loudspeaker.

“It is better if you discover for yourself the properties of each demon. This is why I am letting it loose in the arena with all of you, so that you can figure out it’s stats on your own.”

You were beginning to hate this school more and more with every class, you think to yourself as you sprint towards the center of the arena. A quick scan behind you indicates that the crab monster is chasing a small band of students near the edge of the arena. You take a few seconds to stop and breathe, with your hands on your knees and your back bent over.

Dave and Rose catch up to you a few seconds later. Both were huffing and puffing heavily.

“You survived so far, that’s good,” Rose gasps in between several breaths.

“Why don’t they have more restraints on the demon or something?” you inquire rather harshly.

“My bro has this strict mentality on his teaching methods,” Dave drawls.

You are about to say something else before Rose quickly shoves you to the side and a blur of white rushes past. You hadn’t even been paying attention to the monster’s location while you were talking to your friends. Darn it!

You spin around and regain your balance, then spot Rose and Dave on the other side of the crab demon. They turn around run in separate directions. The monster spins around, and you swear you feel its eyes lock on you. You do a three sixty spin before choosing a direction to run for your life in.

You hear the demon screeching behind you as you continue sprinting as fast as you can. Well, since the teacher did instruct all of you to try and figure out the various stats of the demon, you might as well right now in the worst time possible.

From what you could tell, the crab demon was moderately fast for a demon. It was, so far, more bark than bite, though. It continuously screeched at everything it chased. When it had almost gored you earlier (but Rose had saved you by pushing you out of the way) it could have cut you in half with its seemingly strong crab pincers, but it hadn’t. Maybe it was a nicer demon that didn’t like to injure others if it didn’t need to. There seemed to be a few of those.

Which meant that not all demons were bad. You heard that in some other class, ‘Taming Demons’ or something like that, you could train to communicate and even tame some demons. However, it was apparently very dangerous. You don’t know much about that yet, but you had looked over your schedule and found out that you have that class at the end of the day. You can think and ponder about the subject more then.

You suddenly remember that you are not in the middle of a peaceful and safe classroom, but in the center of an arena with a very feral and most likely very angry crab demon, whose stats, speed, and other qualities are almost a complete mystery to any of you. You should have paid attention to Dave when he warned you about ‘gym at Sburb’ all those weeks ago.

The white crab demon stops screeching for a brief second to try and chop you in half, probably. You are lucky enough to make a sudden ninety degree turn to the right to avoid instant death.

You swear, when gym class is over, you are going to have a talk to somebody about the practices of gym.

Then again, Sburb was a school for exorcism. How could anyone expect it to be completely safe and void of anything of potential danger? It was like expecting a class about throwing knives to be completely safe and void of anything of potential danger.

You wonder how your dad even got into this stuff. Why did he persuade you into joining the school, anyway? You know it had something to do with his friendship and his position in the school, and the exorcists and demon hunters that ran it. There was also something mentioned involving a secret society of exorcists/demon hunters, but you really don’t know anything about that either. Darn it, why were you so clueless? You’ll probably end up discovering more secrets about the school and other stuff along with it as you continue your days in the school. It will be like a long term secret spy thing. Yeah. You should totally be planning out self-insertive movie-ish things to do in the far future when you are being chased by a giant crab demon.

Suddenly, you feel yourself being picked up. Oh no, the crab demon had caught you! It spins you around so that you are now being stared at from maybe only a single foot away. You scream and flail and attempt to punch it with your useless fists, but it doesn’t really do anything except confuse/anger it even more. It looks into your eyes for what seems to be a long time. You expect it to either tear you in half or eat you, but it doesn’t.

It just keeps staring at you.

You continue to scream and fuss and try to get out of its hold. What seems like maybe five seconds later, there is a sudden motion that jerks you to the side and then causes you to fall freely to the ground and land in a nice limb pile in the dirt.

Then, you hear a sudden clank from the far distance. You crawl to a more or less crouching position and look up at the demon. It was being dragged back to the cage from over one or two hundred feet away by that thin and flimsy chain you had seen earlier.

You had totally forgotten that it wouldn’t break, like you thought it would. How did they even get a giant magical chain this long, you wonder?

A few moments later, the monster is secured in the cage. Even from a very far distance away, you see a small figure move and throw a cloth over the cage. It was the teacher.

Then, the loudspeaker comes on again.

“Attention all students. Session one of your training has been finished. Please return to the main entrance and listen while I give out further instructions.”

You heave a huge sigh of relief. At least you wouldn’t be chased again, right?


	4. Chapter 4

Wrong.

All period afterwards, you are chased left and right by demons of all sizes, and pretty much all kinds that you had seen on the whiteboard earlier. This is stupid, you think to yourself as you push by a clump of four scared students huddled together. This is stupid and you should never have gotten yourself into this kind of madness. Why are you even at this school? Who convinced you? Who decided to finally come here? This was literally the stupidest and least educational class you have ever been to. You swear you are going to do something about this. Something needs to be done, darn it! You needed to find someone and tell them about this.

This was so stupid.

You end up surviving gym class, to your utter and complete surprise. You did not know that you even had it in you to run for such a long period of time. You aren’t too out of shape, but you usually get tired from sprinting after about ten or twenty seconds. Maybe it was the adrenaline that had probably replaced your bloodstream during the case.

You and Dave both complain about having to run for so long after gym. You seriously needed to do something about this. But anyways.

Your next period (why are there so many class blocks in a school day, whyyy) is basically the equivalent of demon biology. From what you can tell about the teacher’s first words, this class was also going to require a lot of memorization.

You are going to die.

“There are over one thousand known species of demons. As you know, they all live in the alternate dimension known as Alternia. The laws of physics and biology there are pretty much the same as ours, but there are still huge differences in appearances of any demon.

“I expect you all to know this by now. The only reason I am saying this again is because we have a new student in our class, and because we seem to be in dire need of a review day.”

You suddenly panic at the mention of you being the new student. What had you missed? You hope you haven’t missed too much, otherwise making up for all the lost work was going to take some serious studying. And time. And headaches. And time. And coffee, probably. And headaches.

You look down at your previously fresh and blank notebook. It is now covered with scrawls of messy handwriting, doodles of the demons along with labels of the various parts of them, and more doodles in the margins of the paper because you really need to practice your art skills lately.

Class ends rather quickly.

You let out the deepest sigh of all as you look at your schedule, one more time. Oh right, the demon taming class. The one you had with Dave. You grin gleefully at the paper, ignoring the weird looks people are probably giving you. Then again, you have no idea why Dave is taking this class. He doesn’t even like animals, much less demons, as far as you could tell. Maybe he thought it was ironic to tame something he couldn’t really stand. It would probably be pretty funny to see him try to tame a demon. You giggle a bit at the thought.

You imagine yourself trying to tame a demon. Oh my god, you think. It will be a total disaster. Hundreds of thousands of things could go wrong. You would most likely get eaten, probably. Or poisoned. But by now, the various ways in which you could die of accidents are probably infinite.

You spot Dave strolling along in the hallway on the other side. He spots you and waves. You walk over to him.

“Are you ready for your last class of the day?” Dave asks.

“Yes. Then I need to go home and contemplate all my life decisions,” you mutter, but not grumpily.

“Haha, okay. This class is probably one of the easiest, in my opinion. You don’t really have to do anything, except avoid instant death at all times possible.”

“You’re not helping my confidence, Dave.”

You follow your friend across the hallway, almost to the other end of the school. You suddenly remember you have been carrying only a single notebook and a single pen the entire day. Compared to the other students in the school, who were carrying full sized backpacks and giant stacks of notebooks five binders high, you had it easy.

In the classroom, all the desks were arranged in a circle formation around the center of the room, with the desks facing inside. You are lucky enough to find a seat next to Dave, who just plops down his binders on his desk with the loudest crash you have ever heard in school.

And just a moment after that, the teacher walks in. You are surprised to find that it is none other than your grandma herself.

You gasp loud enough for Dave to raise an eyebrow at you.

“Hello, class,” Mrs. Crocker says. She then notices you. “Oh hello there, John.”

“Hi!” you wave happily.

“Have you done the assigned problems for your homework, class?” she asks.

You look helplessly at your friend. He just tells you to “not worry about it.”

“In case you do not remember, you had to study dogs and how to train them. It was easy homework, hoo hoo! Don’t worry if you don’t have any physical evidence of your work, just knowing a few facts helps!” your grandma chuckles.

She begins to write some stuff on the classic powder covered chalkboard with a yellow piece of chalk.

“As you probably all know by now, dogs are very easy to train. And as you probably know from your recent research, dogs were originally wolves that were tamed, and have since then been living alongside humans as companions. That is pretty similar to how taming demons works, but not quite.

“Now I want you to turn to a classmate next to you and share what you’ve learned from your homework. Come on class, don’t be shy! Pretend you are all friends and that you all like each other, like I know you do.”

You turn to Dave helplessly (again) and say, “Isn’t Jade’s dog a permanently tamed demon or something?”

“I dunno. It’s kind of a long story,” Dave replies hesitantly.

Group discussion time passes rather quickly after that. Classes pass even more quickly after that. You look around at the other students as they leave, one by one. Oh wait, it was the last class of the day. Great! Dismissal time.


	5. Chapter 5

“So where are the dorms?” you ask Jade, who is carrying your suitcase for you. You didn’t even ask her. You didn’t even want her to carry it for you. You weren’t a completely useless person.

“They’re all the way across the campus, about diagonally across from the arena area. There’s a boy’s building and a girl’s building, for some reason, but no one really cares if some people switched rooms or whatever. Actually, we’ve all mostly ignored the gender separating rules ever since they were made. Each building is about 50-50 for boys and girls anyways. Does it really matter? And since we are technically siblings, it hardly matters if we shared a room.

“Besides, since my grandpa is in a more powerful position in the school, I ended up getting a HUGE dorm. Later Dave and Rose moved in with me. We spend most of our evenings goofing off and being dorks like usual.”

You laugh and continue following Jade.

After a long while of hallways, doors, and rooms, Jade stops suddenly at a door and uses your key to open it.

“Alright, John, this is your official room. But you could still move in with the rest of us if you’d like!” Jade glances at you hopefully.

“If it’s not too crowded already, then sure!” you reply.

“It could never get crowded in a dorm room as big as mine,” Jade laughs evilly, then pauses to look at you again.

“Do you still want to check out your room first?” she asks.

“Okay,” you say, then step to the doorway and peek into the room.

You turn the light switch on. The room is rather small, and for some reason (luckily), a single person room, or whatever you call those. There is a small but comfy looking bed in the corner of the room, which is only around twenty by twenty feet big. A small desk fits comfortably at the edge of the room. You think you can see a bathroom and closet off to the side. Other than that, it’s still pretty small.

“Can I look at your room too?” you ask Jade, who eagerly agrees with your decision and drags you by the wrist back down the hall and down the stairs and across the campus and to the other building in about three seconds.

And then she drags you into the building and up the stairs and through several hallways and around several corners until FINALLY, she stops at a door with no other doors within thirty feet of it. You think you can vaguely hear the sounds of probably Dave rapping inside.

Jade kicks down the door (she doesn’t actually kick it down, she just kicks it open) and jumps inside.

“I’m here with John!” she yells (too loudly).

“Eyyyyyyy!” Dave says much more excitedly than you thought he would. He throws off the headphones he was wearing when Jade entered.

You peek around the corner and spot Rose working on her knitting. You notice her look up and say, “I’m glad you made it through the day.”

Your attention falls to the room. The room is at least thirty feet by twenty feet, and you can spot another room, the bathroom, probably, on the other side. A small hallway connects the bathroom and this room, along with yet another room behind it and maybe even a third and fourth room behind that one.

In the first room, though, the one you are standing in, a small table and L shaped couch occupy one corner. The wall with the window has a large desk with a nice computer standing on top. Binders and notebooks and sheets of paper sit in a huge stack on the other side of the computer desk. There’s also another two chairs and one table arranged by the wall to the left of the door.

There must be even more furniture in the other two plus rooms, you think to yourself. How big is the bathroom, you wonder.

“Whoa, your dorm is huge!” You exclaim.

“I know, right?” Jade squeals, leaving your suitcase by the door and running over to a couch by the window and flopping down into it.

“How excited would you be if I moved in?” you wonder.

“Very!” Jade screams.

“Then yes, I would love to move in with you guys!” you yell too.

Jade jumps up from the couch and flashsteps to your side in an instant. In the next instant, she is hugging the wind out of your lungs. Rose comes after Jade and offers a slightly more delicate and careful hug to both you and Jade, who is still causing you to suffocate, but in a friendly and siblingly way. Dave appears behind Rose and joins the group hug. You try to laugh and smile but you gaso for breath a few times before your friends successfully complete the group hug and let you breathe.

“You are all so nice,” you laugh.

“We know.” Dave comments.

“Let me go get my luggage and find a good spot to snore and annoy all of you like I should,” you say, and lean over to grab your suitcase from the entrance of the room.

“Where should John sleep?” Rose wonders.

“The other bunk bed we prepared in case he moved in, which we totally knew was going to happen,” Dave says.

“Yeah, we did know, because we all love each other too much,” Jade says, giggling a bit.

“So John’s sleeping in the same room as Dave, right?” Rose asks.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I better set up my stuff, then,” you decide, and begin unpacking your suitcase.

Jade is so sweet that she ends up carrying most of your junk to your new room.

“Jade, no, stop, I’m not that weak,” you call desperately.

“Yes you are. Let me carry all your stuff for you,” she insists.

“Jade no.”

“John yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No—you know what, whatever.”

You take a few minutes to admire the size of the room you will be sleeping in. It’s almost as big as the living room, but still fairly sized. To your surprise and delight, instead of a bunk bed, there are two separate beds. A table and drawer full of clothes stands in each remaining corner. Right outside the room is the bathroom, which you still have to check out.

“Welcome to la salle des garcons,” Dave says while Jade continues hurrying back and forth to retrieve your stuff. Why didn’t you just open your suitcase in this room instead of making Jade run around from the living room to here?

“What is that French for?” you ask.

“Something like ‘THE FIRST OF TWO ROOMS CONTAINING THE AWESOMEST PEOPLE EVER’, but you never really know.”

You snort a little too hard while trying not to smile/laugh/choke.

“We are now roommates. It is done and official. Jade and Rose are going to come in and perform the sacred ritual of roommate setting. There will be the swearing of an oath. There will be candles and mysterious voices singing as a chorus in the background. There will be dramatic and creepy music playing in the background. There will be… uh… you get the idea.”

“…yeah.”

After you complaing to Jade long enough about letting you carry your own stuff (or more like demanding that she let you carry your own stuff next time) you flop down into your new bed and roll around in it for probably ten minutes.

“Why is everything always so awesome?” you ask the ceiling.

“Because the gang is together now, and the next thing we are going to do is kick some demon ass, together, as a team, for the first time ever.” Dave says from his own bed and gives you a thumbs up.

“I’m ready,” You say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That is the end! The rest of the plot was originally going to involve more training for John, and then eventually he meets a new student named Karkat, who, big surprise, turns out to be literally the son of Satan. But Karkat isn't all that bad. He's pretty funny, actually. John falls head over heels in love with him, all cliche-like and everything. They defeat the devil and save the school. The end. Wow.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 2015. It sucks and I didn't proofread it. The only reason I posted it was because it is a homestuck holiday and because I feel bad for letting down all my fellow johnkatters so long ago. In other words, I'm celebrating by posting all my old works-in-progress that I never finished. They are works in progress and therefore don't make a lot of sense, and if you didn't get it, incomplete. I won't be returning to writing johnkat fics but I guess I'll always be in this fandom. I hate my life. Happy 4/13 you little pieces of garbage.
> 
> And that's it, folks! Thank you for participating in this short revival of my Homestuck authorship.


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